Saturday Lecture Series: Prof Weber lectures on Early Christianity and the Judiasm of that Era

This morning, get your coffee and walk back into the UCLA lecture hall where Prof Eugen Weber’s Lectures on Early Christianity in the Roman Empire ,(you may to follow the links out to the video). Roman culture begins to fail, the Stoics lose their grip over the ruling class. The people in these hard times look for ‘salous’- the health of the soul aka: salvation instead of the ascetic rationality of stoicism that valued virtue, wisdom, and strength. The more the disorder in the Empire grew the less relevant rationality was.

Meanwhile, the Hellenistic and Jewish influence act on Early Christianity while Christianity grows and acts to change the contemporary world from 100-400AD.

Do feel free to get caught back up if you missed the earlier lectures on the Rise of Rome and the Engineering of Rome. Professor Weber ‘s main point is that Early Christianity spread despite contempt and persecution from Rome.

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56 Responses to “Saturday Lecture Series: Prof Weber lectures on Early Christianity and the Judiasm of that Era” ( jump to bottom )

This is very important. The idea that Christianity in it’s essence is a subversive religion. It was not and should not be a state religion. We lost something important in Constantine’s adoption of it. At it’s heart, it is not a faith built for this world. When there is a comfortable relationship between the secular and the Christian, it may benefit the secular – inculcating a moral system – but the Christian loses the necessary separation from the world.

…Should a major hurricane push the spill towards the gulf coast there will be nothing that can be done to stop it. No amount of planning or engineering will help. No number of visits to the gulf by the president or any other official will stop the inevitable. The storm surge will drive the water and the oil miles inland. Everything in its path will be coated in a greasy bath of crude. Even the wind may have oil in it. In New England, I have seen hurricanes and tropical storms that have blown salt spray many miles inland from the coast. The leaves of the trees eventually turn brown and fall off. In the case of the gulf it will be oil that will spray the trees, buildings and everything else in the way. How far inland this oily mess will blow is anyone’s guess but it will be unprecedented in its economic and environmental damage

With no assurances it will be allowed to join the Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup, a Taiwanese-owned ship billed as the world’s largest skimming vessel was preparing to sail Friday evening to the scene of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The ship — the length of 3 1/2 football fields and 10 stories high — is designed to collect up to 500,000 barrels of oily water a day through 12 vents on either side of its bow. It docked in Norfolk en route to the Gulf from Portugal, where it was retrofitted to skim the seas. The ship and its crew of 32 were to leave Virginia waters Friday evening.

The ship will need a Jones Act waiver, EPA approval, and review by a “number of government agencies” before it could begin work. It will take 3 days for the ship to travel to the Gulf and they hope to have approvals by then

here’s the kicker: i’ve been watching the loons on Democracy Now (for one) bitching about the security fence (they compare it to Gaza as well as So. African appartied) so what do they do? carry out a “protest” that PROVES the need for a security fence. go figure

chickadee
21 | June 26, 2010 10:10
They are bored out of their minds with that idiot. They know abt. big spending. They have tried it for years and look where it got them. This really shows you the level of his ignorance and arrogance.

Why in the world would they take economic advice from a Community Organizer (Outside Agitator)?
The extent of Obamas economic activity is redistributing wealth, not creating it.

That godless cocksucker in the White House probably won’t approve of them taking part in the cleanup. It might harsh the mellow of the Unions, you see.

Which really shows you how much these jerks care abt. the environment. zero’s refusal to act and the failure of the eco-terrorists to be pro-active abt. cleaning up the mess is just an other example of what deceitful manipulative scum they are. There is no excuse to not accept the help of these clean up ships.
The left will sacrifice the environment in a heartbeat to advance their fcked up commie ideology.

“He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care. “It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all,” wrote Richard Cohen in The Washington Post”

chickadee
21 | June 26, 2010 10:10
They are bored out of their minds with that idiot. They know abt. big spending. They have tried it for years and look where it got them. This really shows you the level of his ignorance and arrogance.

Why in the world would they take economic advice from a Community Organizer (Outside Agitator)?
The extent of Obamas economic activity is redistributing wealth, not creating it.

He’s like an obnoxious spoiled 3rd grader who makes a nasty scene in an adult setting and no one quite knows how to handle it. The mfm keep patting him on the head, encouraging his incorrigible behavior and other adults are too polite to take the gloves off abt. shut down his unacceptable b.s.
zero is out of control.

I tried putting this in the links, and it disappeared. Caroline Glick nails the problem of the Afghan War. Are we going to turn it around and fight to win, or are w going to continue to fight to lose? And there is this:

This week Haaretz reported on a new hit children’s song that is making waves throughout the Arab world. Called, “When we die as martyrs,” the song is sung by a children’s choir called “Birds of Paradise.” In a YouTube video of the song, children between the ages of two and six sing sweetly of their desire to die for Palestine and are shown triumphantly killing kippa-wearing Jews.

The Taliban’s perspective on the value of human life is similarly grotesque.

It isn’t just the Taliban and Palestinians. During the Iran-Iraq war the Iranians would use children to clear minefields by simply marching the kiddies across the field. This is the enemy that we are fighting.

@ Iron Fist:
The Iranians also conscripted thousands of young boys who would charge in waves across the battlefield into the bullets of Iraqi soldiers. These boys were unarmed and aged 8 to 12. They were used as cannon fodder. Sacrificed for allah.